Which Vanguard fund

DairyQueen

RomfordNavy wrote: »

Unfortunately Lindsell Train funds are not available through iWeb, this is because Lindsell Train funds still have provision for 'trail commission' which was outlawed in 2012, this classes it as a dirty fund, hence why iWeb don't allow it.

Note that it also trades at a high premium to NAV. I never try to time the market but I would hold back on further investment in the fund until the premium narrows in this instance. The trail commission issue doesn't deter me and HL (thru which I invest) offer savings on the OCF. Bottom line is that the fund has outperformed courtesy of investing in a small concentration (less than 30) of reliable, long-trem growth stocks. tt has also benefited from sterling's weakness. It's pretty much the antithesis of a global passive like Vanguard (1000s of stocks).

Note that my core holdings are (ironically) Vanguard passives and this is one of my satellites. It has significantly outperformed my Vanguard funds but that's the point of holding actively managed satellites. Some will outperform and some will underperform. The aim being to pick sufficient satellite outperformers to add a little extra 'oomph' to the portfolio.

londoninvestor

DairyQueen wrote: »

Note that it also trades at a high premium to NAV. I never try to time the market but I would hold back on further investment in the fund until the premium narrows in this instance

Do you mean Lindsell Train Investment Trust, or Finsbury Growth & Income? LTI is at a large premium indeed - because of the holding in Lindsell Train (the fund management company) itself, which is hard to get exposure to otherwise. I think even Lindsell Train themselves have suggested investors don't buy it at this premium.

Finsbury, which is the investment trust near-equivalent of the Lindsell Train UK Equity OEIC, is at a small premium (about 0.7% I think). Not bad if you like LT's investment approach and prefer an IT to an OEIC.

The OEICs themselves (UK Equity and Global Equity) trade at NAV since they're OEICs and the price can't become decoupled to create a discount or premium as it can for investment trusts.

DairyQueen

LT Global Equity not UK Equity. A very different kettle of fish.

point5clue

Prism wrote: »

It seems to very much depend on the sector. If you take UK all companies for example and have a look at the 10yr performance on Trustnet there are some interesting stats.

• There are 189 funds that have been around for 10 years
• The best performing 111 funds are all active funds
• The 112th place fund is iShares UK equity tracker which pretty much hits the index
• All 23 passive trackers are amongst the 77 worse performing funds
• The 158th place fund is Halifax UK equity tracker

Of course there are some active funds that have been retired during that time too however you could argue that a randomly selected active fund 10 years ago would likely have beaten a randomly selected passive fund. (I certainly don't select randomly).

I am suprised at the variation in passive performance when tracking the same index (FTSE All Share). My wife's pension uses SSga for passive trackers and these always seems to underperform over the long run.

Survivorship Bias! Active Funds that survive for 10 years without being killed off or folded into something else are the top performing sub-set looking backwards - not much help in picking the ones that will out-perform in the next ten years.

Search 'the missing bullet holes problem' in investing.

You can have a bad tracker, but there are only a few things you need to fully understand a tracker - index, charges and tracking error.

Linton

point5clue wrote: »

Survivorship Bias! Active Funds that survive for 10 years without being killed off or folded into something else are the top performing sub-set looking backwards - not much help in picking the ones that will out-perform in the next ten years.

Search 'the missing bullet holes problem' in investing.

You can have a bad tracker, but there are only a few things you need to fully understand a tracker - index, charges and tracking error.

Can you justify your assumption that the funds that disappear are the worst performing ones? One of the very few of my funds that closed in the past 10 years was the top performing one in its sector in the previous year. Its disappearance may have been caused by rationalisation when the fund manager merged. And of course when a fund disappears the money is normally transferred to another fund in the same sector. So if an investor did hold a merged poorly performing fund, the performance would presumably increase after the transfer.



You can make some comparison taking into account the funds that disappear by looking at the IA index for the sector. In the example of UK All Companies, over 10 years the FTSE All Share increased by 104% whereas the IA UK All Companies Sector Index increased by 116%.

Linton

To return to the OPs question. Asking "which Vanguard fund should I buy? " seems an odd way of investing. A bit like asking "Which Ford car should I buy?". Perhaps it would be better to ask "what type of fund does my portfolio need?" and then look for the best one across all fund managers.

RomfordNavy

Linton wrote: »

To return to the OPs question. Asking "which Vanguard fund should I buy? " seems an odd way of investing. A bit like asking "Which Ford car should I buy?". Perhaps it would be better to ask "what type of fund does my portfolio need?" and then look for the best one across all fund managers.

Agreed, however my intention was to put a small amount with various fund managers to gain some experience of how they compare with each other. For example I hadn't realised that Vanguard was a passive specialist, as pointed out by @DairyQueen.

coyrls

RomfordNavy wrote: »

Agreed, however my intention was to put a small amount with various fun managers to gain some experience of how they compare with each other. For example I hadn't realised that Vanguard was a passive specialist, as pointed out by @DairyQueen.

You don't need to put money into funds to compare them with each other; there is a wealth of information and historical data that allows you to compare funds. As for comparing fund managers, that would really depend on what funds you picked. I'm quite surprised that you were knowledgeable enough to say “The whole idea of favouring stocks with lower trading volumes was something I looked into a number of years ago” but not knowledgeable enough to know that Vanguard was a passive specialist.

RomfordNavy

DairyQueen wrote: »

Note that it also trades at a high premium to NAV.

...

Thanks I didn't realise that, as it is not listed on iWeb I could not find any way of establishing the premium/discount over NAV. Neither Trustnet not Morning Star, as far as I can tell, show that.

RomfordNavy

coyrls wrote: »

but not knowledgeable enough to know that Vanguard was a passive specialist.

Always previously traded in individual stocks, never much in the way of funds.

Hence the reason for asking questions here.